Word.ws English Dictionary

bullet

UK/ˈbʊlɪt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ˈbɵlɪt/

bullet noun: a projectile, usually of metal, shot from a gun at high speed. Also the ellipsis of bullet chess.

Noun (1)

bullet (countable and uncountable, plural bullets)

  1. A projectile, usually of metal, shot from a gun at high speed.
    Synonyms:
    cap, pill, slug
  2. (informal) An entire round of unfired ammunition for a firearm, including the projectile, the cartridge casing, the propellant charge, etc.
  3. Ammunition for a sling or slingshot which has been manufactured for such use.
    • Then when our powers in points of ſwords are ioin’d / And cloſde in compaſſe of the killing bullet, / Though ſtraite the paſſage and the port be made, / That leads to Pallace of my brothers life, / Proud is his fortune if we pierce it not.c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
  4. A printed symbol in the form of a solid circle ⟨•⟩, often used to mark items in a list.
    Synonyms:
    bullet point
  5. A large scheduled repayment of the principal of a loan; a balloon payment.
  6. A rejection letter, as for employment, admission to a school or a competition.
    • John's not going to any of his top schools; he got a bullet from the last of them yesterday.
  7. (slang) One year of prison time.
    • G.T.A. I got sentenced to a bullet, did six months at fire camp and got a modification.1986, James Ellroy, Suicide Hill
  8. (slang) An ace (the playing card).
    • The miser, a-seeking lost gelt, / The doughboy, awaiting the battle, / May possibly know how I felt / While the long years dragged by as the dealer / As slow as the slowest of dubs, / Stuck out the last helping of tickets / 'Till I lifted—the Bullet of Clubs!1969, Robert L. Vann, The Competitor, volumes 2-3, page 135
  9. (figuratively) Anything that is projected extremely fast.
    • Just as it appeared Arsenal had taken the sting out of the tie, Johnson produced a moment of outrageous quality, thundering a bullet of a left foot shot out of the blue and into the top left-hand corner of Wojciech Szczesny's net with the Pole grasping at thin air.2011 January 19, Jonathan Stevenson, “Leeds 1 - 3 Arsenal”, in BBC
  10. (attributive) Very fast (speedy).
    • bullet train
    • bullet chess
  11. A plumb or sinker.
  12. (Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland) The heavy projectile thrown in a game of road bowling.
Show 6 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. (Australia) A roughly bullet-shaped sweet consisting of a cylinder of liquorice covered in chocolate.
  2. (obsolete) A small ball.
    • Would you not suppose these persons had been whispered, by the Master of the Ceremonies, the promise of some momentous destiny? and that this lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces was the bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the universe?1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque
  3. (obsolete) A cannonball.
    • A ship before Greenwich […] shot off her ordinance, one piece being charged with a bullet of stone.1592, John Stow, The Annales of England
  4. (obsolete) The fetlock of a horse.
  5. (Canada, US) The best workout time at a track on a given day at a specific distance, traditionally marked by a printer's bullet.
  6. A notation used on pop music charts to indicate that a song is climbing in the rankings.
    • I'm eighteen with a bullet / Got my finger on the trigger, I'm gonna pull it / […] / I'm high on the chart / I'm tip for the top1975, Pete Wingfield, “Eighteen with a Bullet”
    • Her third release hit number one in record time — “number one with a bullet” as they said in the industry — and after that, there seemed to be no stopping her.2013, Hallee Bridgeman, A Melody for James

Verb

bullet (third-person singular simple present bullets, present participle bulleting, simple past and past participle bulleted)

  1. (informal, transitive) To draw attention to (text) by, or as if by, placing a graphic bullet in front of it.
    • For instance, in the article on Tim Berners-Lee, we have bulleted "World Wide Web"2000, Merriam-Webster's collegiate encyclopedia, Merriam-Webster, Inc, page x
    • The author has bulleted this section to make it easier to read and included important notes and warnings.2004, Richard P. Pohanish, HazMat data: for first response, transportation, storage, and security, page x
  2. (informal, intransitive) To speed, like a bullet.
    • Their debut started slow, but bulleted to number six in its fourth week.
    • After a little pause, during which the train bulleted through the tunnel, he said, “Poor man,” referring to his late father.2024, Hisham Matar, My Friends, Random House (2025), page 7
  3. (informal, transitive) To make a shot, especially with great speed.
    • He bulleted a header for his first score of the season.
  4. (rare, slang, transitive) To inflict bullet shots upon.
    • They got bro-bro stuck on the wing, cah I picked up and bullet him2021 July 18, “‘Woop’ Freestyle” (0:25 from the start), Trizz (lyrics)
  5. (slang, transitive) To fire from a job; to dismiss.
    • Mowbray never had that luxury, he was bulleted after a run of bad results just as Kenny Dalglish was at Liverpool last season.2012, Iain King, John Hartson, John Hartson's Celtic Dream Team

Noun (2)

bullet (plural bullets)

  1. (rare) A young or little bull; a male calf.
    • —Chicago boasts of a citizen of fine discrimination and delicacy, who, riding in the suburbs with his best girl, passed a stable in the door of which stood a couple of calves. "See," said the young lady, "those two cute little cowlets." "Those are not cowlets, Araminta; they are bullets."1886, Hamilton Literary Magazine, Clippings, page 110
    • “I am not sure a compilation of odds and ends should be called a ‘book.’ Perhaps ‘booklet’ would be the better designation. My daughter, when quite young, once spoke of a heifer calf she saw grazing on the rim of the road as a ‘cowlet.’ In reality, the wayside animal was a ‘bullet.’ Though this...1937, Quarterly Bulletin: The Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio, page 17
    Synonyms:
    bullock

Also used as

bullet is also the ellipsis of bullet chess.

bullet is also the ellipsis of bullet vibrator.

bullet meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

bullet in Hindi

projectile
गोली golī

bullet in Tamil

projectile
தோட்டா tōṭṭā

bullet in Marathi

projectile
गोळी goḷī

bullet in Urdu

projectile
گولی golī
More languagesFewer languages
bullet in Bengali
গুলি guli, বুলেট buleṭ
bullet in Telugu
తూటా tūṭā
bullet in Malayalam
വെടിയുണ്ട veṭiyuṇṭa
bullet in Kannada
ಗುಂಡು guṇḍu
bullet in Punjabi
ਗੋਲੀ golī
bullet in Gujarati
ગોળી goḷī
bullet in Assamese
গুলী guli
bullet in Nepali
गोली golī
bullet in Pashto
ګولۍ golᶕy
bullet in Arabic
رَصَاصَة raṣāṣa, رَصَاص raṣāṣ
bullet in Malay
pelor, peluru, bullet
bullet in Indonesian
peluru
bullet in Thai
กระสุน grà-sǔn
bullet in Vietnamese
đạn
bullet in Myanmar
ကျည် kyany, ကျည်ဖူး kyanyhpu:, ယမ်းတောင့် yam:taung.

Examples of bullet in a sentence

  • I had mind-mapped everything from my business to my baby girl's needs and had bulleted my talking points, brownie points, and breaking points for just about every life area2008, Deanna Davis, The law of attraction in action, page 42:
  • Cow has been home all day busy getting the cotton seed meal and hulls ready for dinner, tending to the little cowlets and bullets and baking a bale of hay.1959, C. B. Kitchens, X-syrps from the Trickem News Chronic, page 5:
  • Maybe their little cowlets and bullets (future steerlets) do; but I have yet to see a cow drink milk.2013 November 20, Gorio, “Re: Milk, redefined. What do you think about this????”, in rec.food.cooking (Usenet), message-ID...

All 40 example sentences with bullet

Synonyms of bullet

All synonyms of bullet

Forms of bullet

Noun
pluralbullets
Verb
third-person singular presentbullets
present participlebulleting
past participlebulleted
pastbulleted

Plural of bullet: bullets

Origin of bullet

From Middle English bullet (“an official tag or badge of registration or identification”), from Old French bullete, diminutive of boule (“ball”). Later influenced by Middle French boulette and French boulet.

From bull + -et.

Words formed from bullet

Phrases with bullet

43 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with bullet

Questions about bullet

What does bullet mean?
Bullet means a projectile, usually of metal, shot from a gun at high speed.
What is bullet in Hindi?
Bullet in Hindi is गोली (golī). See Bullet meaning in Hindi.
How do you use bullet in a sentence?
I had mind-mapped everything from my business to my baby girl's needs and had bulleted my talking points, brownie points, and breaking points for just about every life area
What part of speech is bullet?
Bullet can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce bullet?
Bullet is pronounced /ˈbʊlɪt/ (UK).
What is the plural of bullet?
The plural of bullet is bullets.

Words near bullet in the dictionary

  1. bullered
  2. bullerengue
  3. bullering
  4. bullers
  5. bulles
  6. bullet
  7. bullet ant
  8. bullet ants
  9. bullet ballot
  10. bullet ballots
  11. bullet bra

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bullet (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-bullet.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bullet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bullet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.